MECHANICAL ENGINEERING. 151 



of Nature may be discovered, and the reqviisite mechanism invented, by 

 which to evade the inevitable loss of the larger part of that energy when 

 developed by our present thermo-dynamic machines, and thus to secure 

 the greater part as actually utilized, as useful power. The perfection 

 of our machinery by improvement of details by our later inventors and 

 the production of new and still more wonderfully productive machines, 

 automatic and labor-multiplying, will as certainly continue, and in some 

 fields is likely to astonish us, callous as we have become to these mar- 

 vels, quite as much as were our parents surprised by the inventions of 

 the last generations. Cooperation of labor, of capital, of manufacturing 

 organizations, will necessarily go on, and the 'captains of industry' will 

 have continually larger and larger armies and greater and greater tasks, 

 and we shall have generals, as well as colonels and captains and subordi- 

 nates, in the vast armies of united workers of the coming century. 



We shall secure a liberal supply of this world's good things by a 

 reasonable day's labor on the part of the humblest, wealth in abundance 

 in repayment for superior talent, industry and forethought, and com- 

 fort and a healthful and wholesome life, a happy life, will be assured to 

 all who choose to make the most and best of opportunity, including the 

 wealthy, whose opportunities will be readily found in the promotion 

 of higher learning, of nobler charities and of more generous care of the 

 physically and intellectually lame and halt and blind. We shall in- 

 crease the speed of our fast trains, cross the Atlantic in less time, trans- 

 port the food and clothing and wealth of the world more cheaply, and 

 very possibly add to the fields of invention and the practically available 

 means of transportation the long-looked-for department of aeronautics 

 and aerodromics. We have conquered the land and the water; who 

 shall say that Man is less equal than albatross or sparrow to the task of 

 subduing the elements of the atmospheric world? 



With further evolution in these departments, and consequent im- 

 provement in the condition of the people, all intellectual and moral 

 conditions may be hopefully expected to improve, and the people will 

 grow in character as they acquire knowledge, gaining intelligence as 

 they secure ease of life, and will rise to a higher plane of rectitude and 

 happiness as they are relieved of the grinding pressure of the poverty 

 of earlier times. 



Progress has come to be enormously rapid, and the advance of a 

 generation is much greater than was formerly that of centuries. We 

 may reasonably hope to see something of this multiplied progress of the 

 coming generation; our children will see the still larger multiplication 

 of gain of the twentieth century, and help carry the world a long way 

 toward that ideal which has been but feebly described in Plato's Re- 

 public and More's Utopia, and has been the aspiration of all good men. 



